


(Re)Experience

by SatelliteSoundwave



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: (Very) Temporary Amnesia, Canon typical body horror, Explorations of Personal Identity and Self-worth, Happy Ending, In Medias Res, M/M, Mystery, Plot Heavy Character Study, Rewind-centric, Weaponized Identity Theft
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-24
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-09-25 10:14:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20375089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SatelliteSoundwave/pseuds/SatelliteSoundwave
Summary: Responding to an unusual distress signal, a team of Lost Lighters set out to investigate an abandoned Decepticon base and get locked in with a forgotten weapon from a long since ended war. When their plan to deactivate the weapon goes awry it leaves Rewind temporarily without his memories, and now he has to race to remember who he is and how to shut this weapon down before they all fall victim to a fate worse than death.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Here it is, my piece for the Transformers Big Bang! I've had an absolute blast participating in this event and I'm really excited to start posting this fic, which has been my labour of love for the past few months.
> 
> Also, check out the [fantastic art](https://twitter.com/cerkowah/status/1165414001326485504?s=19) that Cerkowah did to go with this chapter!

**Isolation protocol activated. **

**Secondary function: primed. Initiate purge?**

**Y / [N]**

**Secondary function on standby.**

**Partition integrity: 100%**

.

.

.

His hand hurts.

Rewind onlines suddenly, an abrupt snap into lucidity that means he’s waking up after an abnormal shutdown, and he becomes aware that his hand hurts and his head feels full of static and he doesn’t know where he is all at once.

He powers up his optics and stares up at a ceiling he doesn’t know, grey metal split by flaking orange veins of rust. He’s lying on a recharge slab, he realises, but he’s not plugged in.

There’s a low, rising and falling susurrus of sound that he thinks is feedback ringing in his audials until he sits up and sees someone hunched on the floor beside the slab. The mech’s staring down at the floor and he’s… he’s muttering to himself, that’s what’s making the noise.

He looks like he’d be tall, standing up, but he’s pretty lanky except for the big wheels on his shoulders.

Rewind’s vocaliser crackles, and he has to reset it. “Hello?”

The mech doesn’t react, doesn’t seem to have heard him. Rewind tugs on one of his shoulder wheels.

“Hey, where are we?”

The stranger just keeps staring down at his lap, like he can’t even feel Rewind’s fingers digging into the rubber of his wheel. Rewinds hops off the slab and looks to see if maybe he’s holding something, but no, he’s just staring at his empty hands, muttering too low to make out the words.

Unease slowly congeals in Rewind’s lines. This isn’t right.

He kneels down to try to look the mech in his yellow visor, little puffs of the dust that thick on the floor rising up around his knees.

“Can you hear me?” Rewind tries again.

He goes to tip the mecha’s head up – hoping that looking him in the optics might make him at least notice Rewind – but while one of Rewind’s hands meets his jaw, the other glances off.

Rewind stares at his own closed fist like it’s a parasitic interloper at the end of his arm, and not an integrated part of his body he’s had his whole life. He hadn’t even realised he’d been clenching it, but his fingers are curled so tightly his joints creek. It’s why his hand hurts.

One hand still on the mech’s jaw, Rewind uncurls his fingers and discovers he’s holding what looks like some kind of improvised communicator.

Small enough to fit into the palm of his hand, it’s a clunky little thing made up of a boxy shell entangled in colourful wires that jut out from the right side and loop around to plug into the left. 

He doesn’t remember how he got it. With a dread that consumes him like corrosion eating through a spark chamber, it dawns on him that he can’t remember specifics for much of anything at all.

Rewind triggers a systems check as the flood of panic crests.

**Partition: successfully established. Partition integrity: 98%**, the diagnostic reports.

Rewind drops the device and jerks the other mech’s chin up, harder than he means to but he can’t help it, his hands are shaking. The isolation protocol partitioned his memories and isolated his databanks, he _only _would have used it if there’s a serious risk to his archive. This mecha must have been here when Rewind activated it, he must know why. He must know if Rewind’s archive is still in danger.

“Do I have a virus?” Rewind babbles. “Did someone try to hack me? Was I attacked? Is it – is it some kind of neural degeneration? You’re not even really _looking _at me why won’t you –”

The scrape of metal on metal slices the air, a sound like a blade being drawn.

Rewind flinches in surprise and looks down. Needles gleam where they’ve extended from the tips of the mech’s fingers.

“What…” Rewind trails off. “You’re scaring me.”

He stays still, frozen, and the mech doesn’t move either, the light of his visor dim like he’s lost in thought. He’s still murmuring softly. It makes Rewind’s plating crawl.

Slowly, unbearably slowly, Rewind lets go of his jaw.

The mech’s gaze drops back down to his lap. His needles retract, then extend again. He’s enthralled by it, like he hadn’t realised he could do that and he’s fascinated by the motion.

Rewind sits back on his knees, feeling lost in a way that goes beyond not being able to remember where he is or how he got here. He’s not really sure why. Though he knows on a level as innate as the isolation protocol itself that it is normal after partitioning his memories to be unable to understand contextual connections, even though they may still trigger emotional responses.

He doesn’t know what to do.

So, he needs to find someone, then. Someone who can tell him what’s going on. What happened that was so bad that it made him trigger the protocol.

“I’m going to go find help. Will you…” _be okay?_

The _snick_ of needles retracting again is the only answer.

Rewind waits for a response, the distant hope that he’ll get one slowly shrivelling as his chronometer ticks inexorably onward.

Did someone do something to this mech, to make him like this? Was it whatever made Rewind decide to isolate his databanks? He feels completely useless, having no idea what to even begin to do to help when something is so clearly wrong.

He’ll just have to settle for finding someone else who can. There must be other people around here. There must. He’ll find out what happened. Find someone who can help. Get access to his archive back. Don’t think about the possibility that if there are other people around here they might be responsible for whatever happened to that mecha like that.

Rewind climbs to his feet, wiping dust out of the joints in his leg plating.

His in some kind of bunkroom, with multiple berths and a single door. A light in the hallway beyond flickers intermittently, and the corridor turns out to be deserted when he peeks around the doorway. He looks back into the room, at the mech there, hunched in the pool of his own shadow.

Rewind tries to close the door – better than leaving the room open to anything that might be skulking around – but the controls turn out to have long since died of disrepair, and he isn’t strong enough to pull it closed himself.

Okay. That’s a no go then.

Both directions of the hallway look the same, so Rewind picks left at random and starts to walk. The sheet metal has been stripped cleanly off the walls in places, leaving wire filled cavities exposed. The hallway is lined with doors, some of which are open to rooms identical to the one he woke up in; spartan apart from multiple recharge slabs. Given the slabs and the scale everything’s built to, the building is probably Cybertronian. A barracks maybe? What other kind of places would Cybertronians build to sleep this many people?

The world spins around him suddenly and sickeningly, his gyroscopes abruptly destabilising and he stumbles –

– stumbled as he hopped down off the medical berth but the medic didn’t move to help him. He clearly noticed but didn’t seem to care, more interested in flicking through results on a datapad.

“Alright,” the medic said. The attention he turned on Rewind was clinical, “the operation results all seem to be as they should be, but I need to test your memory, make sure no functionality was impaired. What is your name?”

“Rewind.”

“And mine?”

“Tetralog.” Functionist accredited surgeon, standard ambulance alt mode, brain module specialist with a focal interest in physiological data storage.

“Why are you here?”

“To be upgraded to be able to purge my databanks. Because that’s a mandatory condition of my employment by the house of Ambus.”

Tetralog nodded to himself. “No difficulties with recall. Good.”

Rewind fidgeted awkwardly while Tetralog made notes.

Tetralog had a boxy frame, like most ambulances. He had lots of hard angles that made his expression seem more forbidding than it really was. Rewind had been with Dominus at Tetralog’s office for the consultation when they’d booked this appointment. Tetralog’s extensive credentials had been displayed on the wall behind his desk, he’d seemed proud of his expertise. Passionate about his field.

For all that everyone kept insisting that this upgrade was necessary, because he’d be a repository for sensitive information which required a high level of security and might be targeted by enemies or malcontents, etcetera, etcetera, no one wanted to take the time to explain when he asked how it worked. But Tetralog seemed like he might welcome genuine interest in his work.

“So, how does it work?” Rewind said as he hopped back up on the edge of the medical berth, his feet swinging over the side.

“The how isn’t important, just that it does.”

Or Tetralog was actually one of those people who felt his work was wasted on mecha without the ‘necessary’ functional aptitude to understand. That’s probably what Rewind should have expected. He resolutely didn’t show how much the brush off stung.

“I still want to know.” Rewind pushed. Tetralog hadn’t seemed overly invested in the Functionist philosophies, it was worth a shot. “I mean, knowing things is my function.”

“That it is.” Tetralog agreed. He gave Rewind a smile that was patronisingly indulgent. “You memory sticks are always so curious.”

Tetralog ticked something off on the datapad, swiped down, then flipped the pad around to show Rewind a schematic for the torso of a bot that looked like him; one with a memory stick alt mode. The diagram was a cross sectioned view of the head and chest, with the armour transparent and the brain module, auxiliary databanks, and wiring connecting the two all depicted in precise technical detail.

Tetralog taped on the auxiliary databanks, sheltered behind the thick armour of the chest and close to the spark.

“These databanks – an absolutely fascinating unique feature of your frame type – are capable of storing and retaining information at a much higher quality than the memory banks of the brain module, and will be where your employer deposits his work.”

Which Rewind already knew, but he kept that to himself. If he still corrected every mecha who assumed he wasn’t aware of basic facts he’d never have time for anything else.

Tetralog traced up the path of one of the lines which lead up from an auxiliary databank to stop just below where it connected to the brain module. “In the event that the data is at risk of damage or unauthorised access the adaptations I’ve made as part of your new isolation protocol will allow you to physically sever the connections between these databanks and the brain module. Should this defence not to be sufficient for protecting the data you house, the protocol has a secondary function that can purge the auxiliary databanks entirely. And,” Tetralog added like this was an innovation he was particularly proud of, “to prevent any sensitive information you may have absorbed into standard memory being accessed instead, it will also stop you from being able to access your memory banks, though that is only done through software based measures, encryption and the like. Avoids all the expensive risks of operating directly on the brain module.”

“Oh,” Rewind said quietly.

If that happens, will his employer even bother to pay to get him repaired? It would be much easier to replace him. There are so many other memory sticks. And if they didn’t, he’d be useless. Worthless. What’s the point of a memory stick that can’t store data?

“What are the chances of that happening?”

Tetralog laughed the question off and it made the ugly feeling Rewind fought to keep down twist in his chest.

“Exceptionally low. I’ve had two or three patients come back needing their connections repaired after an unsuccessful hacking attempt, and one very unlucky memory stick who’d been infected with an aggressive virus to try and destroy the information he was storing, but the majority of my patients never need to use the protocol. Honestly I doubt Dominus’s work will attract the kind of attention that –”

– Rewind comes back to himself, sprawled on the floor of the dilapidated barracks. A deep ache radiates through his chest, throbbing in time with the turn of his spark.

Was that… a memory? That shouldn’t be possible, he shouldn’t be able to recall specific memories, not without assistance from an experienced medic. Could the isolation protocol not have executed properly?

He runs the systems check again.

**Partition integrity: 92%**


	2. Chapter 2

Tension prickles across Rewind’s back. He feels like he’s being watched, but every time he looks over his shoulder there’s no one there. Still, the heavy sense of being observed is growing slowly more smothering, like a malevolent cloud pressing down on him.

He’s wandered out of the berthroom lined corridor, through a larger room scattered with dilapidated chairs, and into a wide corridor uninterrupted by doors or windows.

Still no sign of a single person. Which is becoming increasingly creepy and frustrating, but is also a small relief. He doesn’t need to worry about someone unfriendly finding that mecha he left helpless.

The corridor ends in a T intersection. It looks like there used to be a sign on the wall saying where each path went, but there’s nothing left of it now except peeling outlines of black paint. Rewind takes the right at random.

A muted scrabbling sound echoes from behind him. Rewind almost manages to repress the shudder of fear it causes. He hasn’t seen so much as a sign of another living thing since he started walking, but every now and again, he’ll hear that. Distant scrabbling, like vermin moving somewhere in the walls.

The building’s in enough disrepair that it wouldn’t be surprising if pests had moved in. Except he hasn’t yet seen anything that pests could be eating, mechanical or otherwise. Those noises must just be the building settling. Or something.

He keeps hurrying down the corridor.

* * *

Finally, he comes across tyre tracks. They show up clearly in the dirt that’s built up over what must be at least decades of neglect and probably from a speedster, guessing from the axle width. The tracks are smudged like they were going fast. He starts following the tracks in the direction the driver was headed.

**Partition integrity: 87%** the message reminds him from where he’s pinned it in his HUD.

That isn’t right, it should be degrading. Something must have gone wrong when he activated it, some sort of malfunction that meant it didn’t execute properly. Too bad it didn’t malfunction enough to let him remember at least enough to know what’s going on.

He doesn’t have to follow far. The tracks lead into a huge mess hall, turning so sharply once inside that the floor’s scorched with burnt rubber where the driver lost control and nearly fishtailed into a stack of tables left piled against a wall. The tracks show that whoever he’s following managed to regain control of the skid and made a beeline for…

Some sort of weird structure hulking against the far side of the mess hall.

Overall it looks something like a shack, if a shack was built by a group of semi-professionals in a hurry. Hastily constructed, the metal walls are fused with sloppy welds, but the door is heavy and looks unbroachable. It looks about as old as everything else in this place.

Those stripped-down walls he’d seen, this must be where the metal pulled off them went. But why? Why would anyone build this misshapen lean-to in the mess hall, rather than just use one of the many bunkrooms?

As Rewind approaches it, he hears muffled noises coming from inside. Abrupt and rhythmic like arguing. Are there people in there?

Unable to find a way to open the door, Rewind knocks loudly on the metal.

“Hello?” He ventures.

The noise cuts off abruptly, usurped by a silence that’s almost frightened.

“Is anyone in there?” Rewind tries again.

This goes beyond deeply unsettling.

He tries the door again, but it’s stays stuck fast. It must lock from the inside.

“Anyone? I’m not sure where I am and– I need help. Please.”

The silence stays the same, thick and overstrung.

Rewind traces a bubble that had formed in a weld near the door and strains to hear anything from inside the structure. Maybe he was wrong, and there’s not actually anyone inside. The noise could have been from a radio, or some other kind of recording. But then why did it stop when he knocked?

Fear rises up, thick and choking, and he looks back over his shoulder.

There are more tracks, footprints this time, trekking away from where he’s standing to a different mess hall entrance from the one Rewind came in through. Not able to stand waiting around here for another moment, Rewind decides to follow them.

* * *

They lead him to a vestibule where the dust on the floor has been disturbed a great deal, footprints muddled like a lot of people walked through recently. There is a reinforced blast door taking up most of the far wall. If Rewind is right and this is a barracks, that's got to be the main entrance. Given his luck with doors so far, it’s probably locked. The blast door is in better condition than what Rewind’s seen of the rest of the base. It hasn’t been stripped for sheet metal like most of the walls have. Even with the war-grade steel pockmarked by age the door’s still impressive. Whoever built the barracks must have really wanted to keep someone out of here.

Rewind stops eyeing the exit and does a double take. 

There's _someone else _here.

He'd looked straight past them, probably wouldn't have noticed them at all if it weren't for their flashy red and yellow paint job standing out next to the dreary metal of the wall. 

He's standing near the door, stock-still and optics dim. From the sleek lines of his frame and the sharp edged spoiler jutting from behind his shoulders his alt mode is some kind of speed oriented vehicle. Maybe he's for racing, or some other form of entertainment? He must be several tiers higher up the Grand Cybertron Taxonomy than Rewind is.

The excitement of having found someone who can help deflates before it really begins. He's not sure how, exactly, but something about this makes him think of that mecha who was with Rewind when he woke up. Something here feels the same. An uneasy sensation coils in his chest.

This stranger hasn't noticed Rewind. In fact, it almost seems like he has fallen asleep standing up. Weird. 

"Uh," Rewind clears his vocaliser.

The other mecha's optics flicker to blue life. There's one more vacant moment, and then his expression changes with the sudden completeness of a screen switching on, a total shift from blankness to exuberance even before he turns to Rewind.

"Rewind!" The mecha beams.

"Yeah. That's me," Rewind says, surprised. They know each other. That must be a good sign, right?

It's a big space, this entrance hall. It's a long span of weathered floor that stretches between them, long enough that the finer details of the mecha are too blurred by distance to see clearly. It obscures the nuances of his body language.

"So this might be a bit of a weird question, but who are you?" Rewind asks.

The mecha pauses long enough that it feels like he’s actually having to think about it, but there’s no reason for him to need to lie. 

"Rodimus. My name is Rodimus. Don’t you remember?" Concern is audible in Rodimus's voice as he walks over to Rewind.

As Rodimus gets closer what Rewind had thought was a small red rectangle, vibrant on the yellow of his chest, resolves into an emblem of blocky lines stylised to resemble a face. Something about the symbol makes Rewind feel safer.

"No, but that’s not that important right now.” Because it’s not, not compared to things that are really urgent like finding out what is going on. He will need to get a medic to assess this malfunction in his isolation protocol – what if it's endangering the information in his databanks? – but first, he said he was going to go and find help, and now he's found it. "I found a mecha back in one of the bunkrooms and there's something wrong with him, can you help?"

Rodimus gets close enough that it would only take a step or two more and Rewind would be close enough to reach out and touch him. There’s a weird popping sensation in Rewind's chest, like a snap of static electricity somewhere deep down.

And suddenly Rodimus's concern just... drops away. The worried downturn at the corner of his mouth, the way his optics are clearly searching Rewind for any signs of injury, it all just smooths away all at once. 

"There are others outside. We have to find them." Rodimus says. 

Rewind tries to get a handle on the unnerved feeling unfolding in the pit of his fuel tank. That response seems disconnected from his question, but maybe it isn’t and it’s Rewind who isn’t making the connection. “You mean that they’ll be able to help him?”

Seeming to abruptly lose interest in Rewind, Rodimus turns away to walk over to the side of the massive blast door. Rewind trails after him and to where the control panel for the door has been gutted, the plexiglass screen in fractured pieces on the ground and the operational mechanisms gleaming in the hole that was left behind, wires and gears arranged with the ugly utility of mechanisms that aren't supposed to be visible and so compromise no efficiency for the sake of aesthetics.

Incautious of the few sharp-edged shards that still jut from the control panels frame, Rodimus reaches into the broken open control panel and begins rearranging the wires. He works with confidence, stripping back and reconnecting wires without seeming to need to hesitate at all to find out what does what.

Curiosity nibbles at Rewind. "Do you work with non-sentient machines a lot?"

"The blueprint for this mechanism were communicated to the collective."

"The collective?"

Rodimus doesn't answer, too focused in the rewiring. 

Without thinking about it Rewind queries his databanks for the term ‘collective’. 

**Partition integrity: 85% **pings back to him.

The complete absence of a response from his databanks – not a negative result but _no _response at all – is like the sickening lurch that follows stepping forward onto what you think is solid ground only to find empty space. He hates it. He's useless right now. Completely useless.

And even though he can't be certain without his databanks or memories, Rewind can't shake the sense that this emotional barrenness that Rodimus is suddenly shrouded in is wrong. It doesn't fit him the way that burst of vibrancy he'd shown when he'd first woken up had.

Rodimus removes his hand from the control panel and presses a button on the right of it. He points at an identical button on the left side, too far away for Rodimus to reach without having to let go of the one he’s holding down.

"You need to push that."

"It takes two people to open the blast door?"

"Yes. They need to be simultaneously activated to deactivate the failsafe."

Rewind pushes aside his disquiet. There are people out there who will be able to help. 

He steps up beside the panel and presses the button.

There's an ear-splitting grinding sound as a motor judders to life beneath their feet. The door splits down the middle, its two halves laboriously trundling into recesses in the wall. The brilliantly bright light of an alien star spears through the widening gap. Rewind raises a hand to shield his optics and follows Rodimus, who doesn’t seem to be having the same trouble adjusting to how blinding the sunlight is, outside.

The metal of the barracks floor gives way to soft dirt and foliage as they step out into an organic forest. Thick tree trunks crowd the barracks, pressing in closely enough that many of their branches bend at odd angles where the direction of their growth has been redirected by the walls. A lazy breeze twists through the quietly rustling leaves.

Close by a group of richly coloured, feathered animals leap from the boughs of a tree and fly away above the treetops, communicating with each other through deep, whooping calls.

It’s beautiful.

Rodimus doesn’t seem to see the beauty, crushing small plants underfoot as he clinically surveys the landscape.

That feels wrong too. Some deep certainty in Rewind protests that Rodimus _should _recognise the value of this organic life and appreciate this alien world. 

“The other machines are not far away. We must find them." Rodimus says.

The words rub Rewind the wrong way, maybe because something about how Rodimus says ‘machines’ reminds him of how people throw around the word ‘disposable’ like it doesn’t cost anybody anything.

“Other people, you mean,” Rewind says curtly.

It does look like there were people out here not that long ago; the underbrush around the ramp up to the door has been trodden down and hasn’t had enough time to spring back up again yet.

Looking along the side of the building to see if he can work out where the tracks came from, Rewind notices that the metal of the exterior wall next to the entryway has been tinted. The decoration is half hidden by the branches of nearby trees, but by backing down the ramp a bit he can get a pretty good look at it.

Inlayed into the building by this sheet of purple tinted metal, easily twice as tall as Rewind, is a symbol that looks sort of like a Cybertronian face stylised into straight lines and sharp angles.

_Danger_ is his immediate gut reaction to that emblem, followed by that sudden swooping sensation in his gyroscopes, and Rewind goes to bring a hand up to his head and nearly smacks himself in the face, hit with a nauseating sense of disconnect from his own body –

> – ‘The devaluation of the most common alt modes is inevitable while the Senate utilises Functionism to maintain its iron grip over Cybertron; it is demanded by Functionism’s foundational political principles. 
> 
> These principles are disguised as being unquestionable economic truisms rather than ideology which, by design, privileges a distinct group at the expense of all others. The justification for labelling citizens with extremely prolific alt modes as sub-Cybertronian is couched in the language of economics, Functionists explain this practice as being the natural result of the laws of supply and demand.
> 
> The more that supply outstrips demand, the less value each individual unit of a resource is worth in turn. So the Senate claims that if there is only a need for five thousand laser pointers, but fifty thousand laser pointers emerge from the hotspots, then is that not a sign from Primus Himself that an individual with a laser pointer alt mode is inherently disposable in the sense that he is literally unnecessary? Is it not implicit in the natural order that mecha who turn into such common objects are worth less than mecha who whose alt modes assign them to roles for which supply and demand are more evenly matched?
> 
> The Senate and the Functionist Council say so. But in truth the label ‘disposable’ is a tool of political control.
> 
> This becomes apparent the moment a mere modicum of thought is given to the Senate’s power over Cybertron’s economy. The Senate controls the funding which builds infrastructure and creates new jobs. If there are more laser pointers than there are jobs which require them, the Senate has the power to create more of those jobs to reduce that inequality, and their decision not to do so is a politically motivated one.
> 
> Aggregated together the six most common alt modes make up a significant proportion of Cybertron’s population. If even one of these groups united under the banner of common experiences and defied the Senate’s control, they would be a serious threat by value of sheer numbers alone. If all six were to do so, the rebellion the Senate would be facing would come close to half of all Cybertronians. Neutralising this threat was the true purpose behind the invention of the ‘disposable’ class. By ensuring their economic disposability, the Senate has manufactured a justification for labelling these people as socially disposable, which in turn is used to legitimise their enslavement and over-policing.’

A hand came to rest on Rewind’s shoulder and startled him out of his reading. Dominus stood behind him, he’d leaned over his shoulder to see what Rewind was so absorbed in.

“We’ll be landing on Cybertron soon.” Dominus said. He gave Rewind’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze, and Rewind raised his own hand to entwine their fingers.

Rewind tipped the datapad so that Dominus could read the title at the top of the page. “Have you read this?”

“‘Towards Peace’?” Dominus read aloud. “Parts of it, yes. It seems to say a great deal of things that needed to be said. A Pity that the movement that was sparked by this philosophy has become what it is.”

“Pity, yeah.” Rewind fiddled with the datapad, scrolling back and forth before he powered it down and subspaced it. “Minimus is already waiting, right? I should get ready.”

“Minimus and another Autobot who will perform the Rite of the Autobrand for us.”

Rewind hopped off the chair, just slightly too tall for him, and landed on his feet. But Dominus didn’t leave. He stayed in the cramped berth quarters of their shuttle, hovering uncertainly behind the chair.

“Rewind,” Dominus said, “perhaps I am wrong, but I get the feeling… If receiving the Autobrand is not something you are comfortable with, you do not have to do it.”

“I want to,” Rewind said, a little too quickly, but he didn’t want Dominus to notice how the knot of uneasiness in his chest twisted at the words.

Dominus studied him a moment longer, his face slightly pinched with concern. He clearly wanted to push this further, but their shuttle was about to breach Cybertron’s atmosphere and he needed to go and take over control from the autopilot to guide them down.

“If you are certain.” Dominus said before he left for the cockpit.

Rewind sighed.

If only it was as simple as whether or not he wanted to join the Autobots.

So much had changed in the centuries since they’d left Cybertron in search of Luna 1 – it felt like everything had changed – but… From what they’ve heard so far it seemed like the Autobots rose up to defend the old order of things.

The datapad sat heavy in his subspace.

It seemed like the Autobots got their start in opposing a faction founded on the philosophy that every Cybertronian had a right decide how they live their life, that even his dataslug alt-mode didn’t make him worth any less than anybody else. What sort of people would join a cause based on opposing that? What would the world turn into if the Autobots won? And how could Rewind justify pledging his allegiance to them? How could he justify actively helping them?

How could he not, when Dominus was joining?

There was nowhere Rewind wanted to go if his conjunx wouldn’t be there with him. But more important than that was the centuries of Dominus’s work, unique datasets from test results and census data and complex statistics that took years to develop and more, stored on Rewind’s databanks. If Dominus became an Autobot and Rewind didn’t, they would eventually be separated. He couldn’t cut Dominus off from the data stored in Rewind’s archive, he didn’t have the right.

So he’s going to join the Autobots, because how he felt about it couldn’t be more important than that.

A dull roar started building, the sound of their shuttle having entered Cybertron’s atmosphere, and fine tremors began to shake everything –

– Rewind comes back to the present with a lurch, still standing up this time but hunched in on himself.

_Dominus_.

Grief wells up, all the more awful because he doesn't know _why_. On its heels comes a heavy guilt that Rewind can't understand which sits like a foreign object in his chest. But somehow it isn't crushing. It feels like maybe he's had time to process it, to figure out how to live with it, even if he can't remember that anymore.

"We must find them." Rodimus says, repeating himself.

Rewind convinces his body to straighten from its defensive curl, his optics irresistibly drawn to the badge emblazoned on Rodimus's chest. Autobot, the context from his newly accessible memory fills in the word. The inseparable opposite of the Decepticon badge on the wall behind them. He doesn't feel conflicted about his decision to join the Autobots anymore. He wonders what's changed since that memory that resolved his fears.

Rodimus is still standing just beyond the barrack's entrance. He doesn't seem to have moved at all from where he was before Rewind’s involuntary memory recall. 

Rewind checks his chronometer. He's lost a fair chunk of time thanks to... whatever this thing that keeps happening to him is, but Rodimus is acting like nothing strange has happened, as if he somehow also missed the minutes of what was presumably Rewind staring blankly into space.

That finishes off Rewind's shrinking hope that his sense that something is genuinely, dangerously wrong not just with this place but with the only lucid person he has found here.

He perfunctorily pings his database for any information at all to help him, and dismisses the **Partition integrity: 75%** notification that brings up. He can't be certain of anything, except his own intuition shouting at him that his current ignorance has let him wander into obvious danger without even realising. Rewind thought– he _assumed_ that he and knew each other. That Rodimus was a friend. 

But Rodimus knowing his name doesn't actually mean anything, not really, he'd just let himself think it did.

Facts. He needs facts. At least enough to know how much trouble he's walked right into.

"What are we doing here?" Rewind asks, his spark whirling unsteady rotations. Hopefully Rodimus will focus on the question and not Rewind subtly shifting to put more space between them.

Rodimus goes to repeat himself again, “We need to –”

“Find them, yeah, you said, but I don’t mean right now. What are we doing here, as in on this planet? We came here together, right? Why?"

Rodimus doesn't ignore the question. Not exactly. It’s more like he doesn't understand it. Rodimus's expression goes flat, like all of the _person _has drained away and left a mask behind. That popping sensation in Rewind's chest comes back again, an insistent itch.

He shouldn’t have said anything. He should have just run. He's suddenly and horrifically aware of how much smaller than Rodimus he is.

A distant, motorised sound slices through the tension and Rodimus looks up, through the gaps in the canopy to the sky.

The trees started to tremble as the choppy sound gets closer, waving back and forth in the growing wind. It’s the sound of rotors, Rewind realises, from some sort of aircraft.

A helicopter plunges down through the foliage with all the finesse of someone who can’t find it in themself to give a damn. It wobbles in its decent as leaves snag in the rotors, setting down heavily not far from Rewind and Rodimus.

The cockpit pops open and a bot jumps out, sliding down the helicopter’s blue plating and hitting the ground with a thud. The undergrowth – nearly knee deep for her, she can't be any taller than Rewind – doesn't slow her down as she jogs over to them, waving and grinning like they are the best news she's ever heard.

And when Rewind looks back from the newcomers everything in Rodimus's body language has suddenly shifted again; he's smiling and animated and going forward to greet the new arrival, calling out a delighted "Lug!" in the exact same tone he'd greeted said Rewind's name when he first ran into Rodimus.

In fact, everything single thing about Rodimus’s demeanour is exactly the same as that moment; the same warm grin, same little wave. Perfect deja vu, like someone's reused a segment of footage he's already seen.

It makes Rewind’s doubt and uncertain crystallise into pointed barbs of panic. It's not just him now. These people are in danger.

"Wait!"

Rewind lurches forward, arms out to ward off Lug, trying to get between her and Rodimus. 

"What?" Lug says as she stops.

With a bemused series of whirrs and clicks the helicopter transforms, unfolding into a bot who's all spindly angles and confused squinting.

"I second that question," the helicopter says, using his claws to pick greenery out of the rotors in his arms.

Rodimus turns to Rewind, stopped just short of the others.

"You okay?" Rodimus's concern nearly makes Rewind's head spin because it's changed so fast from his blankness just moments before these people arrived. 

Rewind fumbles for what he how he can convince these people about something being very wrong here when they haven't seen what he has. No-one’s going to believe the word of a data stick over a race car, and Rewind doesn’t have any proof.

Lug looks between Rewind and Rodimus in confusion. "Is this about the quarantine? Your message didn't come through properly, but from what we received it sounded like the base would stay in lock down until Nautica fixed the thing that set off the quarantine?" She peers past them into the yawning entry to the Decepticon barracks. "Is that not what's happened? Where's Anode?"

"A quarantine?" Rewind echoes in shock.

Oh. He'd thought that the locked blast door really meant business about keeping someone out, but of course that's true for the reverse too, isn't it? It would be just as useful for keeping people in.

And he'd opened them. Rodimus hadn't been able to break the quarantine without Rewind's help. Oh Primus, what has he done?

"I didn't realise," Rewind says, sick with guilt because whatever happens to these people now it's his fault, "I didn't know about the quarantine."

Rodimus laughs self-deprecatingly. "That’s because was an accident. We were messing around with the base's power grid and set off the quarantine stuff by mistake. Pretty dumb, right?"

The helicopter snorts. "Ugh, and here I got all excited for nothing.”

An accident? Rewind doesn't know what to think about that. The two newcomers have just accepted it like that's something have to deal with all the time. Maybe it is? It's not like Rewind can remember. 

He didn't actually see anything in the barracks that would require a quarantine, did he? It was creepy, yeah, but being old and empty doesn't make it actually dangerous. Doubt ties Rewind's thoughts in knots. He looks to Rodimus, who is still a lot more friendly – more _animated _– than he had been before the others showed up. Rewind couldn't have just imagined that odd behaviour before, could he? 

Or... or maybe he did. He's malfunctioning, he knows that, he's losing time and re-experiencing memories even though that shouldn’t be possible, the isolation protocol should have blocked those off entirely. Maybe paranoia is just a part of whatever’s wrong with him?

"'fraid so, but you can still come in and check on everyone." Rodimus shrugs. "No point in coming all this way for nothing."

"This'll be the first time Anode's managed to visit an uncharted planet and _not _step in a truckload of trouble. I'm going to have to see it to believe it," Lug says, and starts heading into the base, the helicopter and Rodimus on her heels. Still unsure of himself, Rewind trails after them. 

But when they cross the entry to the barracks, stepping out of the bright sliver of natural light slicing in to the base through the doorway and into the washed-out glow of the old fluorescents, Rewind hovers on the threshold. He doesn't want to go back in.

He didn't think they were paying much attention to him, but the helicopter stops too, cutting Rewind a sharp glance with his single optic narrowed. His claws click together as he flexes them.

"Yanno, you guys have been down here for hours, but that distress beacon is still broadcasting. I figured you would have switched it off if nothing's wrong. What's the holdup with that?" The helicopter turns to Rodimus, his head tilted to the side like an inquisitive bird.

Things go a bit quiet when Rodimus doesn't answer. Lug frowns. Rewind scratches at his chest, distracted by a prickling like static electricity.

And just on the edge of hearing there's that sound again, a sort of scrabbling noise. The one that had followed him when he was exploring the base.

"Rodimus?" The helicopter prompts.

"Whirl?" Rodimus responds.

Then Rodimus puts a hand on Whirl's arm, just above the curve of the rotor. Whirl looks down at it in surprise like that’s a strange thing for Rodimus to do, but doesn't shake him off.

"Is anyone else coming here?" Rodimus asks.

"Ultra Magnus was a bit on the big side for me to give him a lift, so he's catching up. Reckon he'll be here any minute."

"Good."

Rodimus's grip on Whirl's arm turns fierce as he yanks him off balance.

Whirl swears in surprise. Something scuttles out of the hole in the wall where the door controls used to be, skittering across the floor.

It moves so quickly that Rewind only gets a brief impression of silver metal flashing under the lights and spindly legs before the tiny thing scurries up Whirl's leg to squeeze into the gap where the bottom of his cockpit juts from his chest.

Terror roots Rewind to the spot.

"Whirl!" Lug yells in panic.

Whirl scrabbles at his cockpit, his claws squealing shrilly against the glass.

“What the frag! Get it out–”

Whirl wrenches to the side hard enough to break Rodimus's grip, but it carries him too far and he overbalances and falls, crashing to the ground so hard the metal floor dents under him.

Another one of those things appears from the corridor behind Lug, zigzagging across the ground towards her.

Rewind tries to yell a warning to her but his vocaliser locks up helplessly with fear.

Lug runs to Whirl, dodging his flailing limbs and trying fruitlessly to pull him up. Whirl’s shouting has turned wordless.

The second thing leaps onto Lug's back. She jerks and tries to twist to grab it, but it slips sinuously through her fingers and crawls through a seam in her plating.

Whirl stops flailing and goes still. 

After a moment Lug stops panicking too, stilling until she is just standing slack and staring emptily into space.

The ensuing silence is somehow worse than everything that came before it, because now Rewind can hear how Lug and Whirl are whispering to themselves, very quietly, like that mecha who was with him when he first woke up.

Rodimus turns to him, and Rewind's paralysis breaks with a full-body flinch away from him because Rodimus has been so still, somehow watching all of this happen with complete impassiveness.

"We must find the last one." Rodimus says.

Every word, each inflection, it’s a perfect re-enactment of how Rodimus had said those things before.

It’s too much.

Rewind runs.


	3. Chapter 3

He bolts away from the base, away from Rodimus and Whirl and Lug – and oh primus that was his fault, he helped break the quarantine, he let out the things that were trapped inside the barracks, what happened to Lug and Whirl that was _his fault_ – and into the trees.

Ferns tangle around his legs and branches whip at his face as he runs blindly forward.

The cracks of tramped twigs and his own venting are so loud he can’t hear anything else, but he can’t shake the fear that something is chasing him. That something small and spindly is racing after him to jump up on his chest and burrow into a gap in his plating.

As the stays in his legs start to burn from exertion he bursts out of the sudden edge of the forest and onto an open plain.

He slows to a stop, bracing his hands on his knees, his fans thrumming rapidly in his frame as they work to vent out overheated air. He’s not sure that he wants to be in this wide-open space where everything can be seen for klicks around, but he can see now with the short organic grass that carpets the wide-open space that there is nothing after him.

And forward, in the opposite direction of the base, he can see an indistinct mass in the distance.

It’s distant, too far away to make out than the blocky shape.

But it’s getting larger. It must be moving, coming closer. Rewind’s gasping in-vents are becoming less desperate, and now as they quieten he’s starting to hear a rumbling in the air.

It’s the roar of an engine running full throttle, and as it comes closer the shape resolves into the hulking form of a truck. Sunlight reflects blindingly off of the cab’s windshield. The air vibrates subtly around Rewind as a heavy-duty engine powers the truck over rough ground.

Relief does a dizzying tango with fear; Rewind can’t even begin to work out if this person is friend or foe.

He takes a few anxious steps backwards towards the trees, halfway to running again, further, far enough away that he stops imagining spindly legs clawing into his armour, but the truck has already seen him and is changing course towards him.

And what if this person doesn’t know about the things in the barracks? Somebody has to warn them.

Rewind can feel the vibration of that engine all the way up his legs by the time the truck gets close enough to see the clumps of grass that are being pulled up and tossed into the air by the spin of their tires. It's close enough that Rewind winces with worry about a collision before the truck transforms with a rushed hiss of hydraulics of someone feeling stressed. The blue and red mecha wipes at the dirt caked around his wheel rims with a look of disgruntled repugnance.

Fear pulses through Rewind like a second sparkbeat. His mind's eye won't stop looping that awful moment when Whirl stopped struggling and just went still, like something inside him had been forcibly switched off.

He can't let those things hurt anyone else. 

The words pour out of Rewind with the force of a ruptured dam, "It's not safe, there are these- these _things _in that base..."

He falters. He can't think of how to explain those things when he didn't so much as see one clearly, how can he communicate how just seeing one made quivering revulsion swell up in him?

The mecha starts to lift a hand and Rewind stumbles back from him, helplessly reminded of Rodimus's hand on Whirl's arm, the guise that had been manufactured to cover the chance to make him vulnerable.

The mecha's frown pinches with concern. He withdraws his hand and instead slowly takes a knee, lowering himself until he's much closer to Rewind's level. 

"Rewind?" Oh. He knows Rewind as well. Or at least his name. "Are you alright?"

"No." Any answer but an honest one is beyond Rewind right now.

Apprehension darkens the mecha's expression. Something about that, about him, feels more… he seems less emotionally vacant than Rodimus had, even when Rodimus had been making those calculated efforts not to. Fear eases its vice grip on Rewind’s chest a little. He still shrinks back a step as the mecha straightens, but the mecha only activates a comm link. Whoever he's trying to reach doesn’t answer, there is nothing but dead air in return.

"Whirl, Lug, check in."

What was it that Whirl had said? That someone called Ultra Magnus was catching up with him and Lug. This must be Ultra Magnus, then.

A small, guilty part of Rewind hopes this isn't him. How is he supposed to explain what happened to Ultra Magnus's companions?

"Whirl. Lug. Please respond." Ultra Magnus tries again. 

When the white noise stretches beyond breaking point Magnus turns his optics to Rewind.

"What sort of 'things'? What exactly happened?"

"It was my fault," Rewind confesses, "It's my fault the quarantine was broken. But I didn't _know_, I didn't mean..."

He has to stop, has to focus very hard on trying to stop the trembling that is making his plating clatter. He can't quite seem to manage it.

Ultra Magnus is watching him struggle, and that makes everything even worse. Because even though he doesn't feel _wrong _the way Rodimus did, what is Ultra Magnus going to do once he knows what happened to his friends?

But then Magnus shocks Rewind out of the panic spiral he's descending into; he transforms back to his alt, shrugging open his passenger side door in invitation.

"We'll head back to the shuttle. Anything that can give Whirl trouble is something that I want to know as much about as possible before I run off to meet it.”

The open door reinvigorates Rewind's stale fear. Can he trust this mecha?

Rodimus has seemed safe too, at least at first.

But he has to hope, though, doesn't he? Not everyone on this planet can be an enemy. You can't see the good in people if you aren't open to looking for it.

And what’s the alternative? There’s nothing else around as far as the optic can see, and he’s definitely not going back to the barracks.

It would just be nice if, sometime soon, Rewind met someone who didn't scare him.

Choosing hope over fear, he climbs into Magnus's cabin, pulling himself up to see over the dashboard and watch the truck pull a U-turn and take them both back the way Ultra Magnus had come.

* * *

Technically, Rewind hasn’t actually seen a lot of things in the brief stint that he can remember, which kind of takes the impact out of thinking that this ‘shuttle’ Ultra Magnus takes them to is the most ridiculous thing Rewind has ever seen. But, he’s certain even if he had access to his full lifetime’s worth of memories for comparison the statement would still be true.

It’s… weirdly spherical? As they circle around to the front and more of it comes into view he finds that with the viewscreen shaped like that, framed by gold plating that gives it the shape of a visor, it almost looks sort of like a giant head.

It kind of looks like Rodimus, actually. Which only makes it more strange.

It also makes Rewind question his perception of Ultra Magnus as an extremely no-nonsense type of person, since _this _is what he travels around in.

Rewind disembarks so that Ultra Magnus can transform to root mode and follows him onto the shuttle. Ultra Magnus boards it indifferently, like it’s just a normal shuttle and not desperately begging for a double take and a whole stack of questions.

Is this what Rewind’s life is normally like? Would he also be using transport that he’s suspecting doubles as a monument to someone’s unrestrained ego like it’s no big deal if he wasn’t being forced to look at it with new optics? He queries his databanks. The response only returns the result that the partition has degraded: **64% integrity**. Concern about that decay doesn’t last long before it is consumed by a Molotov cocktail of burning curiosity and trepidation about finding out what decisions he’s made that he might have that he ended up with something like _this _being normal.

Compared to the flashy exterior the shuttle is almost disappointingly average on the inside; just the same sort of essential hardware and stations that Rewind can remember from the shuttle he and Dominus had searched for Luna 1 in, completely without the audacious ornamentation on the outside.

It is bigger than the shuttle he and Dominus had used. Big enough to have been carrying a lot of people, several more than Rewind has seen so far. He hopes they are all safe.

Magnus immediately moves to check the shuttle’s communications station.

Being inside the shuttle feels odd, Rewind is coming to realise. Like a thought is halfway to unfurling at the back of his mind, a twinge from somewhere beyond accessible memory. There's something about this place. It's comforting. It feels just shy of familiar, and like he knows he will be safe here.

“I can’t detect Lug or Whirl’s signals at all now,” Magnus says lowly, more to himself than to Rewind as he agitatedly flips switches to adjust the station’s settings. “That might just be the base’s shielding blocking the signal if they have gone inside. But that might be holding out too much hope."

Rewind stands nearby uncertainly, wishing he knew how he could be useful here.

Ultra Magnus gives up and steps away from the communications station. He notices Rewind's uncertain hovering and frowns. Then again, he was frowning already. It's more like his frown changes tone to convey a different shade of emotion.

It looks like something has just occurred to Magnus. "Where is Chromedome? It's odd for him to not be with you in a crisis." 

“Who?” Rewind answers blankly.

That response disturbs Ultra Magnus for some reason.

“Sorry. I have an emergency protocol which segregates my memories and my databanks,” Rewind explains. “I must have needed to use it a few hours ago, so there’s a lot of stuff I can’t remember at the moment.” 

“You still have that? I thought you’d gotten it removed.” Magnus looks surprised, and also a few shades shy of distressed.

"Why would I have removed it?"

"Because… It's a modification that treats your personhood as inconsequential compared to your functionality as an information repository." Magnus says, taken aback by Rewind's question. Something about this is important to him. "Modifications like the isolation protocol are objectifying. They’re only justifiable if you push the argument that your only value is in your capacity to be a useful object."

It's understandable, from an intellectual standpoint, why Ultra Magnus would be passionate about things like this. While trucks aren't that high up in the Taxonomy, they are several rungs above the disposable alt-modes. But understanding that doesn't stop the flash of anger that flares up because Magnus doesn’t have to be aware that not everyone can afford the luxury of having objections like that.

"Well, yeah, maybe, but I wouldn't be much use without it." Rewind doesn't entirely succeed at keeping the snap out of his voice.

"You don't need to be useful." Ultra Magnus's face darkens with the shadow of suppressed sadness. "You were the one who convinced me of that."

That can’t be right. Data collation and storage are what he’s _for_. Even if Dominus is gone, as he feels like he is, Rewind wouldn’t have let himself become redundant. He _definitely _wouldn't have preached redundancy. That's tantamount to suicide.

"Who's my owner?" Rewind asks.

"_No one_." Magnus says abruptly. "No one owns you anymore. No one's owned you for a long time."

And that can't be right either. None of this is making sense. He must have found someone that he could be useful to. 

Maybe this Chromedome person Magnus mentioned is his owner. It would explain why Magnus expected them to be together. Rewind can understand why his owner hasn't told Magnus about the arrangement if Magnus gets like this about it.

Maybe. Today's been full of maybes, there's so much he can't be sure of. He hates how much there is that he doesn't know.

Ultra Magnus glances at the communications station. "We simply don't have time for this, no matter how much I want to convince you. Ratchet's with the landing party, once we find them he can deactivate the protocol and you’ll remember. But we need more information to work with. Can you tell me what happened? Clearly. What was in the base that made the landing party lock it down?"

Frustration wells up in Rewind like an itch under his plating. He tries to remind himself that it isn't Ultra Magnus's fault that he can't remember, but Rewind is frightened and tired and lost and can't be sure of anything at all, and the thought doesn't go very far against all of that.

"Look, I get why that would seem like a straightforward question to you, but _I don't know_. I don't know what happened, and I don't even know if the stuff I do know is what you want to hear or if it was all totally normally and everything's supposed to be like that now." The anger that flushes hotly through Rewind is awful, it amalgamates with the fear he's been carrying since he woke up and makes his fuel tank roll nauseatingly.

"I understand that–"

"I'm not sure you do, but alright. Let's try something that might actually be helpful, and let me ask some questions, okay? How about we start with why we’re here?"

"Here, as in on this planet?"

"Well, I dunno. Are we not normally on this planet?"

Magnus's optic ridges draw together. The pause stretches, and it stretches thin.

"I see your point." Magnus concedes.

Then Magnus surprises Rewind, speaking haltingly as if each word is being carefully deliberated over. "I... have been informed that I can be deficient when it comes to certain social graces, and that can make emotionally fraught conversations with me unpleasant. I can't imagine what you are currently experiencing must be like. It appears awful enough that I do not honestly wish to."

Well. That douses Rewind’s anger as thoroughly as a candle falling into a bath. He hadn’t been expecting an apology, or for Magnus to acknowledge Rewind’s feelings as legitimate and reasonable. Rewind gets the sense that Magnus is not someone who finds apologies easy.

“This would be easier if you were able to use the footage from your camera.” Magnus says, still sounding frustrated with himself for putting his foot in his own mouth.

Wait, what?

"What camera?" Rewind looks down at his empty hands, as if a recording device he's somehow managed to not notice until now will suddenly materialise in them.

"It's not hand held," Magnus taps the left side of his own helm. "It's deep wired."

Rewind reaches up and touches the side of his head curiously, his fingers bumping up against the curve of the deep wired camera he hadn't known was there.

Oh. That’s new. When did he get that installed?

An even bigger question than that: why? He can’t imagine what he would have needed it for.

"I had no idea it was there." Rewind says.

“The isolation protocol will have encrypted your memory of getting it installed. We’ve also got that protocol to thank for not being able to use it. You’ve said before that its recordings are stored directly in your auxiliary databanks, and the cameras connections to them will have been severed along with the ones native to your frame.”

“Or maybe not,” Rewind thinks aloud slowly. He’s mapping out the camera with his fingertips, feeling the smooth curve of the lens. What does it look like? What does he look like with it?

“How?”

“The protocol didn’t work right. I’ve been… remembering things. Not voluntarily, but still. And if the memory partition didn’t execute right, maybe the other stuff didn’t either? It’s worth a try.”

“It is,” Magnus says with restrained excitement. “The recording light is on. Can you access anything of the inside the base? Anything at all might be useful.”

Jumping at the chance to be helpful, Rewind puzzles through his HUD, scoping through prompts and notifications. And then going back and examining each one again more slowly when he can’t find what he needs. 

**Partition integrity: 61%** the reminder informs him unhelpfully from the corner of his HUD.

"How do I use it?" Rewind asks, finally giving up.

“I… don’t know. You are the expert. Normally.” It’s almost comical how someone as big as Ultra Magnus is can seem to deflate so much from disappointment.

Shame washes through Rewind. A chance to finally be useful and he can’t even manage that. 

_Okay, think practically about this._ Software controls can’t be the only ones the camera’s got, because that would only be accessible to him, and what would be the point of that?

“It must have some kind of exterior controls, right?” Rewind reasons out loud, tracing the side of his helm again to see if he can feel them.

Magnus walks over, and Rewind has to tip his helm back to be able to look him in the optics. Magnus’s hands hover nearby Rewind’s head uncertainly. “Do you mind if I…?”

It feels kind of weird that Magnus asked permission before touching him. Rewind feels like people don't normally bother to do that.

"Go for it," Rewind says, tilting his head to make the camera easier to access.

Magnus frowns as he peers down at the side of Rewind’s helm. “This might be a bit easier if we are closer to the same height. Hold on a moment.”

Magnus directs Rewind to a bench set into a wall, probably for passengers to secure themselves during turbulence judging by the straps and buckles attached to it.

Rewind hops up onto the seat. He figured that Magnus would stand over him, but instead Magnus surprises him again by sitting on the floor by his side. Rewind furtively checks Magnus’s expression, but he doesn’t seem at all irked at having to lower himself for a disposable.

Like this they’re equals, at least in terms of height.

All the little things that aren’t making sense suddenly line up.

“Are we friends?” Rewind asks.

As soon as he’s spoken Rewind cringes internally, feeling like an idiot. _Obviously_ the answer is ‘no’. For friendships to form you need to think of someone as a person first. Most mecha don’t see ‘person’ as compatible with ‘disposable’.

The question makes Ultra Magnus fumble.

“I certainly hope so. Wait,” Magnus scowls at himself, “I should not let my own awkwardness make me ungenerous. Yes, we _are _friends.”

Huh.

As Rewind struggles to reconcile that, Magus uses his closer perspective to check over the side of Rewind’s helm, his concentration entirely focused on searching for the manual controls. Or at least it seems that way, as Magnus is studiously avoiding meeting Rewind’s optics.

“I find that I value our friendship a great deal. I am much happier with myself than I once was, and I feel that I owe a… not insignificant amount of that change to it.” Magnus says, speaking with careful vulnerability.

That’s– Rewind feels warm and disbelieving at the same time. He wants it to be true, and it even makes sense together with the unexpected way Magnus has been treating him. But how can it be? He can’t imagine what he could have to offer that would make Magnus actively value his friendship.

Now able to see better, Magnus finds and presses what must be some sort of latch in the side of Rewind’s helm, and Rewind feels the uncanny sensation of cool air wafting against circuity normally covered by the plating that sits over his camera as it lifts up.

And then they are brought up short by a different problem.

“We seem to have found the manual controls. Hmm. They are a bit more delicate than I can manage.” Magnus says.

They both look at Magnus’s raised hand, which is large enough that it could easily wrap around Rewind’s entire helm.

Rewind considers seeing if he can feel out the controls and activate them himself, but he’s hesitant to mess around with components inside his own head without at least being able to see what he’s doing. Perhaps there’s a mirror or something around here that he can use to make sure he doesn’t break anything delicate. Or at least important.

Ultra Magnus studies his own hand, considering. “Or at least that I can manage as a currently am.”

Whatever that means, it seems to give Magnus an idea for a solution. He stands up and back, taking a few measured paces away from the bench.

“Not to worry, this is perfectly normal,” Magnus assures Rewind.

And then he _splits apart_.

He literally disassembles, unfolding from the chest outwards so that a much smaller bot can neatly step forward from the pieces.

A rush of giddiness makes Rewind glad that he’s already sitting down, because for the first time in accessible memory he experiences what it’s like to see someone and actually recognise them –

– Minimus had surprised exactly no one when he’d volunteered to be the one to take inventory of the supplies they’d need to get off the Necroworld and reclaim the Lost Light from the mutineers. Rewind had found him cataloguing how much energon they could transport, to calculate precisely how long it would last them under strict rationing.

There are some conversations that will never be easy to start, no matter what direction you come at them from. Rewind opted to begin with what was most important.

“Are you alright?”

Minimus didn't look up from the cubes. “Hm? Fine, though I would be better if we had the proper medical logs rather than just Ratchet and Velocity's estimates for the crew’s energon consumption rates and fuel efficiency. Underestimating even one person's needs could leave us starving light years away from any supply outposts."

"That... sounds awful," Rewind said. "But I meant, um, about after what happened. With Dominus."

Rewind had to keep reminding himself that he hadn't been the only one here who Dominus was important to. When Dominus... when he had saved Chromedome, he wasn't the only one who had been hurt by the consequences.

Minimus stiffened.

"Maybe you should talk to Rung a little," Rewind suggested gently.

"I already have, actually. He was very... helpful."

Part of why Rewind had thought that now was a good chance to have this talk was because he’s better at being able to read Minimus's mood when he was out of the Magnus armour. He’d gotten a lot of practice at it, back in the early days when Rewind had just been hired by Dominus and Minimus had been around more often than not.

Minimus was without the armour at the moment, as it needed to be downgraded from the Maximus Ambus version back to its usual size, and as far as Rewind could tell Minimus was being genuine. Like he'd been able to make peace with his brother's death.

That's good. At least one of them has been able to.

"I don't blame you, you know," Minimus said, suddenly and seriously. He still was not quite looking at Rewind, instead almost grimacing down at the energon cubes. Minimus continued on determinedly, "The domestication had already destroyed Dominus’s mind, and what you did was a reasonable choice considering the situation you found yourself in." 

For a moment Rewind just stood there, a little stunned. He hadn't come here expecting forgiveness.

"Thank you," Rewind said. He felt strangely lighter, somehow, like he'd put down something heavy that he'd been carrying.

Minimus shrugged, still bent to his task of tallying up the crate of fuel.

Rewind considered the cluster of similar crates that were all open behind him, still waiting to be counted.

"Would you like some help?"

Minimus finally looked up from his work. He didn't smile, but his facial insignia twitched like he was thinking about it. "That would be appreciated."

Rewind got a spare datapad to tally up his own counts on, and they divided the remaining work evenly between them. Apparently the Necrobot'd had a distillery that they could use to make more energon if it turned out there wasn't enough for the trip, but they would be able to head out faster if what was already cubed up and transportable was enough. Rewind propped himself up on the side of a crate and started counting. 

Minimus finished up with the crate he had been working on when Rewind had first found him and moved on. His next one was half empty, and he braced one hand on the lip of the container to lean down and sort the cubes into orderly, and easily countable, rows.

And although Rewind had already decided that he hadn't come here to ask these questions – because this conversation wasn't about Rewind, it was for Minimus, who was grieving – they still built up like a physical pressure on his vocaliser. Every minute that ticked by of working together with Minimus in companionable silence made it worse. 

He shouldn't risk reopening emotional wounds that Minimus had only just started to heal. But Minimus is the only one he can ask. The only other person who still remembers.

Rewind wanted to be reassured. Or at least to be certain.

"Do you think Dominus was ever going to tell me about being a loadbearer?"

Minimus straightened. "I cannot speak for my brother, but I think he may have tried to convince himself that it didn't matter."

"It matters to me. I just– I shared everything about myself with him."

Chromedome, hiding things. Countless years with Dominus, and Rewind hadn't even really known what he looked like. These things keeping happening and Rewind had started to wonder if it's because of him. To think that there was something inherent to Rewind himself that brought this out in people.

He needed to know. “Did Dominus ever talk to you about me?”

"Of course. Although I get the sense that there is something specific you want to know about."

"Did he... I'm sorry, this is stupid. Of course he cared about me. And he said– He acted like... I keep thinking about how much of a scandal it was. Dominus Ambus, accepting a disposable as his conjunx endura. I mean, if you wanted to make a statement against the Taxonomy that's a hell of a way to do it. That isn't why we took the Rites, though."

"You did them because you loved each other."

"Yeah. At least, that's what he said? And he was so earnest. Except it turns out that there was all this stuff that I never knew about him, and now I can't stop thinking about it, I can't stop wondering if I was just..."

Convenient.

Disposable.

It wouldn't have been the first time Rewind had been discarded after he'd stopped being useful. He'd just thought– he'd hoped Dominus was different.

Now here he was dumping all of this on Minimus, and that's not fair of him at all, to have pushed his own issues onto somebody else like this. It's not fair for him to do that to anybody, and Minimus especially can't have wanted to hear about this.

With deliberated precision, Minimus put down the datapad he had been working on.

"Would you believe," Minimus began as he folded his hands together and looked down at them contemplatively, "that I have had doubts along similar lines to yours? Dominus did not tell me that he was infiltrating the Decepticons. He never so much as hinted at it. He preferred to let me grieve him for centuries rather than giving me an indication that he was alive. It is very difficult to think of those as the actions of someone who truly cared."

Minimus cycled a ventilation before he continued, "But there is no doubt in my mind that Dominus loved you. There couldn't be, not with how he talked about you; he was in awe of your passion and kindness and how fiercely you held on to them when you lived at the bottom of system that took great pains to crush those things out of people like you. And I am sorry if it is unkind for me to do so, but I..."

Minimus's face hadn't changed, but the faint sound of grinding metal told Rewind that his hands had clenched.

"I reassure myself that Dominus did care, because I know that he loved you and he still abandoned you too, in the same way. Dominus decided that a chance to get the Autobots closer to winning the war was more important than you and me, but that does not mean we meant nothing to him. That was just who he was. It is only a matter of accepting it.” –

– Rewind comes back to the present to find himself lying down, which is something he's becoming more familiar with than is probably healthy. This time though it feels like he has been lain down gently, without the dull aches of impact that follow having fallen. Minimus is standing over him with a medical scanner, fiddling with it agitatedly, muttering something about the readings not making sense.

"I'm okay," Rewind says as he struggles to sit up.

Rewind's return to lucidity doesn’t assuage Minimus's concern and he tries to convince Rewind to stay lying down, but Rewind ignores the direction and swings his legs over the edge of the same bench he'd been sitting on before that flashback. Each time he wakes up from one it gets easier for him to recover from the after effects; he needs barely any time at all to fight off the persisting sense of vertigo. _Is that a good or a bad sign?_ Rewind wonders as he checks his partition reminder.

**Partition integrity: 54%**.

Minimus puts a hand on his shoulder to steady him, which Rewind appreciates even if he doesn't really need it.

"You had– I don't know, it might have been some kind of seizure, I couldn't get you to respond to me at all. You just kept muttering something, but I couldn't make out the words." Minimus says.

"This isn't the first time. Remember how I said I wasn't remembering things voluntarily?"

"You had a flashback? I didn't think the isolation protocol was capable of causing something like this, even if it didn't execute properly." Then Minimus puts together what happened immediately beforehand. "I caused it, didn't I?"

He did, but honestly Rewind is grateful to have that part of himself returned to him. It gave him back a comforting feeling of kinship with Minimus, from knowing that someone else had recognised when Rewind was hurt, and was struggling, and had not only seen those things but had also _understood_ how he felt. That was... He there aren't words for how much that meant.

And Minimus had been right.

Rewind suspects he’s regaining contextual knowledge alongside each relived experience; after each one he is instinctively knows more things even though he still cannot directly remember how he knows. He is certain now, for instance, that Minimus has never been a disposable. Which means Minimus was right that Dominus's abandonment of Rewind had nothing to do with that, because not being a disposable hadn't protected Minimus from the same thing.

There is a surge of old guilt, that Minimus had been suffering as well and Rewind hadn't noticed, even though he had been perhaps the person best equipped to do so. That he'd been so tangled up in the fear that Dominus had left because of what Rewind is, he hadn't realised that Minimus had experienced the same pain.

"It's a memory I'm happy to have back. It’s good to recognise you, Minimus," Rewind says, covering the guilt with a smile in his voice.

At first Minimus looks surprised to have been remembered, then his shoulders sag with relief. Though he also straightens and leaves Rewind to balance on his own, uncertain of his capacity to provide support now that it is no longer essential.

"I hope this means I don't need to explain the Magnus armour again? It's happened enough times recently that it's gotten a bit dull, honestly," Minimus says.

"Happy to save you the trouble, then. There's a lot of gaps, still, but I've got that much context at least." Rewind mentally pokes at the new knowledge that has leaked out around the decaying partition, trying to figure out what the most concerning gaps are. "Are we still trying to get the Lost Light back from Getaway?"

"We reclaimed the Lost Light some time ago, and believe me, how that happened is too long and improbable to go into right now. The ship's in orbit around this planet at the moment. We came here because we picked up a Cybertronian distress signal originating from here. When we arrived, we were able to determine that the beacon producing the distress S.O.S was of a design that was used almost exclusively by the Decepticons during the heyday of their Infiltration Protocol."

Minimus pauses to get a sense of Rewind's reaction to this, looking like he's waiting to see if Rewind gets what makes that significant.

He doesn't. "Does that not happen a lot?"

"Almost never on a planet with thriving organic life like this one. Several stages of the Infiltration were the translation of the Decepticons’ rhetoric that organic life will always be a threat to Cybertronians, and so should be eliminated, into action. Planets host to Decepticon bases during that time are typically barren now because of the 'cons intensive extermination efforts against the native lifeforms."

"That's awful."

"It is. It is also why we decided to send a landing party – consisting of yourself, Chromedome, Rodimus, Drift, Ratchet, Nautica, and Anode – to investigate distress signal. We thought it was possible that it might have been activated by organics with no other means of signalling for assistance. Also, Rodimus said that any organics who were able to 'kick the cons off their planet' were people he had to meet. It wasn't until the landing party entered the base that we found out it was equipped with shielding that interferes with communications signals and we lost contact with them. There's been no communications since they entered the barracks, at least until you. We have no idea what's happened to them."

Rewind taps his camera. "But I might. And you are small enough to manage the manual controls now."

"That was the idea."

Minimus does have more success this go around, hopping up onto the bench next to Rewind to examine the controls. Rewind tips his head slight to the side so that Minimus can see what he's doing more easily. Minimus tentatively flips something that Rewind can't see but feels like it might be some kind of switch.

Nothing happens.

"Nothing is labelled and I don't know what I'm doing," Minimus warns him.

Rewind almost shrugs, but cuts the impulse off so that he doesn't jostle anything. "Just give it a try. What's the worst that could happen?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some irl stuff has come up so there's going to be a bit of a wait before the next update. Once I'm able to get the ball rolling on things again I'll be sure mention it on [my tumblr](https://satellitesoundwave.tumblr.com/) to let people know that things are On The Way, feel free to mosey on over and ask questions/say hi/gush about robots with me :3


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